Quote:
Originally Posted by AsianDivaGirlsWebDude
Good input Ebus_dk...
At one point my mainstream business had 5 employees, not counting my wife and I.
I used ADP for accounting (good fixed price, plus it's a write-off - all I needed to do was call in the gross pay for everyone, and they took it from there, calculating and paying all of the taxes and filing the quarterly reports).
I used Blue Shield for Medical/Dental.
I negotiated a very good deal for phone service (since my bills ran in the thousands per month), by having all the major companies bid on it, and then making the company I wanted all along match the best bid.
Ebus nailed it on the head when it comes to hiring employees. I expected each person to pull in a pretty good chunk of change for the biz, so I treated it as a big decision. Finding self-motivated people that know how to get along with others is golden. The rest you can teach them.
After 9/11, the Marketing Departments of many Fortune 500 companies (our target clients) pulled in the reigns on outsourcing, and as a result we had to change our business to adapt to a very different environment. We gave nice severence packages to everyone, had a tearful goodbye party, and re-invented our company.
We now only hire people as sub-contractors for specific projects. Life is much easier and the company always operates in the black, allowing me to focus more time and energy on my adult businesses, although I miss the comaraderie of working with a group of people for several years (I do almost all of the adult biz myself, although I also hire people for specfic projects).
Outsourcing is back on the rise, however we are continuing with the sub-contrator model since it is much more flexible and entails less overhead.
If you have any specific questions, I would be happy to try and answer them, either here or offline.
Good luck,
ADG Webmaster
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Another nice one.
I see a lot of it works the same as sorting through dozens of models a week. In the end it comes down to work ethic, and their teamwork, can-do mentality.
I've heard plenty of nightmares about once you start hiring employees, that is when you start weeping, pulling out what's left of your hair, and contimplating suicide. Not because of the business, but because of your employees.